Posts about swimming technique and mechanics
I’ve had some conversations with some of my swimmers recently about swimming “effortlessly.” When we use the term “effortless” we are using it in the sense of the Taoist term, wu wei. Wu wei is an complicated philosophical concept debated for around 2,500 years, so I will apologize up…
Many of you ask questions about integrating the kick into the timing of the stroke. Click the image to the left to read an article written by a Total Immersion colleague of mine, Stuart McDougall. It’s a great introduction to the issues related to timing the kicks with the strokes…
I was going through my stack of swimming rags yesterday, and I came across an interesting analysis of the straight-arm recovery in freestyle in Swimming World’s December, 2014 issue (“Freestyle Straight-Arm Recovery” by Rod Havriluk). The article’s main intent is to put to the test the conventional wisdom that a…
A few months ago, I was asked at a talk how to use a Tempo Trainer effectively in a swim practice. For those not familiar with Tempo Trainers, they are little plastic discs that can clip to your goggles or go under your cap when you swim. You can set…
I took off in the middle of the day to do my swim today. I wanted to play around with some Tempo Trainer sets in this practice and see how I would do. If you are interested, you can see the detail on the practice on our website. For those…
I read an article on the American Swim Coaches Association (ASCA) website a while back. It’s written by John Leonard, the head of ASCA, and it’s a response to an email that he got from a coach about practicing with good swimming technique. His response highlighted the importance to coaches…
I was thinking of a set of drills and focal points that I could use in the first month after my MAF test. Total Immersion has embraced the 2-beat kick and integrating the kick with the body rotation. Kick cadences is something that I have never done. Since I come…
For those not familiar with the Chicago open water swimming scene, the Big Shoulders 2.5K and 5K open water swim is one of the big open water swims in the Midwest. My mentor, Terry Laughlin of Total Immersion Swimming sent me an email a week or so ago saying that…
When I was teaching Week 4 of my Monday night triathlon swimming class for the Chicago Triathlon Club, I had a swimmer ask me why she felt slower after we had started to rework her timing, balance, and vessel shape. I’ve introduced the Total Immersion Perpetual Motion Freestyle stroke drills…
My office manager forwarded on an article from “Chicago Parent” on the use of swim noodles in swim classes. I was about to write a blog post that swim tools don’t teach, teachers do. I was going to take a triathlete angle and pick on my favorite enemies, the hand paddle…
